Grit Lab Report

Hi Matthew,

Welcome to your personalized Grit Lab Report!

We will go week by week, reviewing everything you have told us through Poll Everywhere.

We hope this will help you reflect on what you have learned and experienced during Grit Lab.

Important note!

Sometimes, you may not have been able to respond to all polls.

If the data for one of the polls is missing, the automatic report will display NA, or ““.

Okay, let’s get started!

The first half of Grit Lab delves deep intp the passion facet of Grit.

We like to call it Choose Easy, because we think gritty people pursue what they enjoy.

Putting it graphically, gritty people tend to pursue the intersection of these four circles.

The first time we met, you told us where you were on the grit rubric.

Regarding passion you picked Stage 4: I have an interest I’m actively pursuing, voluntarily devoting more than 3 hours of “free time” each week .

Regarding perseverance you picked .

As you know, grit grows, so don’t worry if you are not yet where you’d like to be in your grit journey.

Hopefully, this class will help you become grittier each day.

In week 2, we looked at your interests.

Interest is an emotion, and it is the opposite of boredom.

Your interests are the activities or subjects that spontaneously grab your attention.

Trying things out and seeing how you feel is the best way to refine your interests.

In week 3, we studied values, your beliefs about what is important.

You said your top three values were stimulation, self-direction, and achievement.

You wrote a “This I Believe” essay, and here’s where you located it on Schwartz’s value taxonomy.

When we talked about strengths in week 4, you said your personality strength was emotional stability.

You said your top three talents were analytic, social, and verbal.

We then talked about goal hierarchies.

You said you about your top-level goal.

We discussed self-concordance, or how much a goal aligns to your deeply held values and beliefs.

A goal you said you will be pursuing for the next six months is to .

Here is how self-concordant that goal was:

Don’t worry if your self-concordance for that particular goal is low.

It might mean that you need to reframe that goal in a way that makes it more relevant to your deep self, or change it!

Remember that self-concordance is goal specific, so other goals might be more self-concordant.

We then transitioned to the second part of Grit Lab:

Work Smart

In week 6, we looked at goal setting and planning.

You WOOPed!

For your Wish, what you wanted to accomplish, you said Ace acct1010 midterm .

For your Outcome, what would happen if your wish came true, you said Daddy proud .

For you Obstacle, what it is within you that stands in your way, you said My stupidity .

For your Plan, you created this when-then plan to achieve your goal: When i study, i grind .

Whether you changed your WOOP or stuck to that one, here’s where it landed between being a total fail, and going exactly according to plan.

And here’s how much you learned

These goals are hard, and despite our best efforts, our plans can fail.

The important thing is that you learn something along the way!

In week 7, we talked about deliberate practice.

You shared you’ve done daily practice in School .

We learned that deliberate practice requires a challenging, hyperspecific goal, maximum concentration, instant feedback, and is often done alone.

In week 8, we discussed feedback.

Even though feedback can be hard to take, it is often the key to improve. So if you want to improve, seek it actively!

You said you felt when receiving critical feedback, and when receiving positive feedback.

We then turned to learning about stress.

In week 9, you reported feeling a moderate amount of stress in your life right now, the primary source of it being recruiting .

We also talked about adversity and failure.

Although related, adversity and failure are different:

Adversity happens to us, whereas failure is something for which we are generally more responsible.

However, how we interpret stress and failure matters…

Interestingly, research has found that people who believe that stress can facilitate learning and growth experience enhanced performance, well-being, and health.

And failure—not achieving a particular goal—can be interpreted as “I’m learning!” and lead you to look for the lesson in that experience.

We closed the Work Smart section of the class by talking about habits.

Throughout the semester, you practice habit building using your Build-A-Habit Guide book.

You describe the habit you chose as Health .

Whether you were successful in habit building or not, this is how much you learned.

Finally, what good is grit if we do not dream for others?

So, we transitioned to Paying it Forward.

In week 10, we looked at mentors: role models that take an active role in your growth.

Hopefully, your mentor was authoritative, being both supportive and demanding.

Here’s how you described them:

You also wrote a gratitude letter to Parent .

In one word, you said it made you feel Fulfilling .

One way of paying it forward is having a prosocial, beyond-the-self purpose. Here’s how you responded to items assessing that.

… and so quickly we arrived at the end of the semester.

Here’s how your mood varied over these weeks.

Do you notice any patterns? Is there anything that correlates with your mood?

Here you can scroll through all the quotes you wrote to summarize each class.

Appreciate the art of the chase
Try everything to find something you'll obsess about
Know my values
Focus on effort and not talent. Find a career aligned with who you are
Thinking about obstacles and having a plan helps
Hone in on weaknesses, get a coach
be mindful of how you phrase feedback
Learn from failure
Change the situation not will power, reduce temptation
Find a role model who demands a lot

In the final class, we looked back to everything we’ve learned together and to how our passion and perseverance evolved during this class.

Here are the comments from your Grit Lab Teammates:

Sarah Lavery
Matthew is fun, kind, and a gentle listener. His honest sharing was always appreciated and I have learned so much from him during the semester. My favorite memory of Matthew is when he told us a story of how his passport ended up in the washing machine and he had to go to NYC to get a new one. I would have freaked out in this situation, but Matthew seemed cool as a cucumber! My group mates and I would joke that it was funny how he was the only sophomore and only boy in a group of three senior girls. However, his adaptable nature and easy going demeanor did not make this a challenge! I know Matthew will do well in any environment he finds himself in! Matthew gave a wonderful presentation on finance - a topic I know very little about. Yet, he made the information very engaging and accessible. I really appreciated how he took a topic I often find very boring and confusing and gave it life! One thing that I learned about finance is that it can be fun. I now see it more as a field of solving puzzles. Matthew was really excited to share his work on a project that predicted something that happened in real life.
Allegra Hill
Matthew was the only sophomore boy swarmed by a team of three senior girls, and instead of being intimidated, he embraced it and rocked it! Matthew was an invaluable member of our team, oftentimes reminding us jaded seniors of the hope and possibilities still felt by younger grades. His tenacity shone through his smiley demeanor, and he was a great addition to our team. I really enjoyed being Matthew’s teammate throughout the semester! Matthew’s discovery project focused on discovering more about the world of business, more specifically investing. He was smart to gear his project towards something that would directly benefit his career progression, unlike myself who took this project in a more recreational direction. Matthew mentioned that his project showed him the effectiveness of WOOP, and it was great to see that he could set his mind to conquer any obstacle he encountered. During the semester, Matthew frequently referenced concepts from his Wharton classes and discussed using them in interviews for upcoming summer internships. It is nice to see that his discovery project serves as a platform for reinforcing his academic insights and applying this knowledge to real-world scenarios.

We hope you have emerged from Grit Lab a little grittier than you started.

Do you want to see how your grit rubric changed?

Drumroll please…

Don’t worry if the rubric doesn’t yet reflect growth. It is only a coarse measure that cannot replace your own self-reflection.

In any case, grit is not built in a day…

…remember that progress is never smooth…

…so stay passionate and persevering in the lifelong quest of choosing easy, working smart, and paying it forward.

With grit and gratitude,

Angela and the Grit Lab team.